UGA Creative Writing Program

Last month, UGACWP's Chigozie Obioma travelled to Morocco for the Marrakech African Book Festival and sat down to discuss being an African writer today in an interview with Lyana Saleh on France 24's show arts24. Watch the interview: https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/arts24/20260430-booker-prize-nominee-chigozie-obioma-on-being-an-african-writer-today

It's publishing day for one of UGACWP's alumna, currently a First Year Writing instructor here at UGA, Kristen Gleason!

From NYU Press(https://nyupress.org/9781964499673/the-wallet-and-other-thefts/):

"Winner of the BOMB Fiction Prize and White Review Short Story Prize, Kristen Gleason’s debut is a collection of precise, surreal, and lightly linked short fiction, concerned with theft, shame, exile, masochism, and God, reminiscent of Anna Kavan, Jane Bowles, and Marie NDiaye.

Closely observed and slyly destabilizing, THE WALLET AND OTHER THEFTS is a book of short fiction shimmering with mystery and menace. This surreal, precise collection unfolds in a world beyond conventional time and space. Concerned with theft, shame, exile, tourism, masochism, God, and “Nature,” these stories are lightly linked—objects, diseases, and landscapes reappear. Gleason’s elliptical prose refuses traditional narrative logic, resisting easy resolution. Reminiscent of the work of Anna Kavan, Jane Bowles, and Marie NDiaye, THE WALLET AND OTHER THEFTS is a work of slipstream fiction that pulses with a sense of something generously withheld."

Kristen Gleason is a fiction writer whose short stories have appeared in BOMB, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, The White Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. Her work has won a number of awards, including the BOMB Biannual Fiction Contest and the White Review Short Story Prize. She received a Writing Fellowship from A Public Space and was a fine arts Fulbright grantee in Tromsø, Norway. She lives in Athens, Georgia.

Tonight!! We'll have the back room at Athentic from 5-7pm and will plan to hear from our two graduating PhD students, Sayantika Mandal & Christina Wood, around 6pm! See you there!

Make some time this Friday to join the Translation Research Cluster for a presentation of a translation in progress from Lisa Dillman.
Request preview of the PDF before the event by emailing Magdalena Zurawski, [email protected]

Lisa Dillman studied Spanish at the UCSD before completing an M.A. in Spanish Literature at Emory and a second M.A. in Literary Translation from Middlesex University in London. Professor Dillman is a renowned literary translator of Spanish and Latin American literature and has translated over thirty novels. She is a recipient of the Emory Language Center’s Excellence in Teaching Award, and has twice received the Winship Award for Senior Lecturers, and has created several courses on translation at Emory. In the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, she teaches multiple translation seminars (both beginning and advanced), as well as courses on contemporary literature and language.

UGACWP’s Sristi Ray is reading some poetry with some locals at the library today!

Almost ready!

Congratulations are in order for Gabriel Awuah Mainoo for being selected as this year's Diann Blakely Emerging Poet! Gratitude to this year's Diann Blakely Visiting Poet, Karla Kelsey for selecting the winning poem from the more than 200 submissions we received this year!

Visit the Blakely Archive to read his poem "A Pathogenesis of the First Slave Ship" and learn more about him and his work! https://blakely.uga.edu/emerging-poets-archive/2025-2026

Congratulations to Nicholas Allen, Director of the Willson Center for Humanities & Arts, on his latest publication, "Late Heaney," with Geraldine Higgins. We'll be in attendance for this event on April 16th at Cine!